Olympic Athlete Quotes

The first time I walked into the Olympic athlete village seeing the Visa ATM machine with my picture on it and the Chinese characters saying 'Destiny.' For some reason, it just boosted my confidence and it was before I had even worked out or had my first training or competed. ~ Nastia Liukin

I still can't believe I'm an Olympic athlete. ~ Shawn Johnson

My life was always different growing up. I mean, even before the show, my dad was who he is. He's an Olympic athlete. And we were going to premieres, like 'Finding Nemo' premieres, and we would be little kids, like, before the show, walking down the red carpet. ~ Kendall Jenner

I get more gratification out of getting some obese person who had a heart attack running around and enjoying life within a year. I get more gratification from that than putting a person in the Olympic Games. The Olympic athlete probably doesn't appreciate what you've done, but the other guy does. I think it's really rewarding. ~ Arthur Lydiard

The Olympic Games were created for the exhaltation of the individual athlete. ~ Pierre De Coubertin

Little did I know that there's nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes. ~ Bruce Forsyth

Maybe there's a little girl who thinks she can be an Olympic athlete, and she sees all the things I struggled through to get here. Yeah, I didn't walk away with a medal or run away with a medal, but I think there's lessons to be learned when you win and lessons to be learned when you lose. ~ Lolo Jones

In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it. ~ Sebastian Coe

Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Some air-conditioning systems are set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete. Indeed, even if our gloomy friend wins $50,000,000 in the morning, discovers the cure for both AIDS and cancer by noon, makes peace between Israelis and Palestinians that afternoon, and then in the evening reunites with her long-lost child who disappeared years ago - she would still be incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Every Olympic athlete prepares differently. For me, I am 100 percent into the sport. And if I decide to really make a crucial career decision to say, 'This is something I want to do,' I want to leave no stone unturned in my preparation. ~ Apolo Ohno

I've never felt that I was less of an athlete or not accomplished athletically because I didn't win an Olympic medal. It's definitely something I would have liked to have added to my resume, but at the same time I think I can look back at my athletic career and feel that I was one of the best. ~ Mary Decker

Pedro Algorta, a lawyer, showed me the fat dossier about the murder of two women. The double crime had been committed with a knife at the end of 1982, in a Montevideo suburb.

The accused, Alma Di Agosto, had confessed. She had been in jail more than a year, and was apparently condemned to rot there for the rest of her life.

As is the custom, the police had raped and tortured her. After a month of continuous beatings they had extracted several confessions. Alma Di Agosto's confessions did not much resemble each other, as if she had committed the same murder in many different ways. Different people appeared in each confession, picturesque phantoms without names or addresses, because the electric cattle prod turns anyone into a prolific storyteller. Furthermore, the author demonstrated the agility of an Olympic athlete, the strength of a fairground Amazon, and the dexterity of a professional matador. But the most surprising was the wealth of detail: in each confession, the accused described with millimetric precision clothing, gestures, surroundings, positions, objects.....

Alma Di Agosto was blind.
Her neighbours, who knew and loved her, were convinced she was guilty:
'Why?' asked the lawyer.
'Because the papers say so.'
'But the papers lie,' said the lawyer.
'But the radio said so too,' explained the neighbours.
'And the TV! ~ Eduardo Galeano

An Olympic medal is the greatest achievement and honor that can be received by an athlete. I would swap any World Title to have won gold at the Olympics. ~ Jeff Fenech

The Olympics are every four years and I think every athlete who competes in the Olympics wants the gold medal, and I think that's what the World Cup is for a rugby player - it's the gold medal. ~ George Gregan

Holmstrom has broken an Olympic record by being cross checked 46 times in one game! ~ Harry Neale

Honey, I appreciate that so much, I really do, but it's not just transferring that I'm worrying about. I'm worried about his mind-set. When he gets to UVA, he needs to be focused. He's going there to be a student athlete. He can't be driving down to North Carolina every weekend. It just isn't practical. You're both so young. Peter's already making big life decisions based on you, and who even knows what's going to happen with you two in the future. You're teenagers. Life doesn't always work out the way you think it's going to work out. . . . I don't know if Peter ever told you this, but Peter's dad and I got married very young. And I'd - I'd just hate to see you two make the same mistakes we did." She hesitates. "Lara Jean, I know my son, and he's not going to let you go unless you let him go first." I ~ Jenny Han

To be here, is a dream come true. A dream is something that you set for yourself, not what other people set for you. When I qualified in Seville I burst into tears. I couldn't believe that I was going to the Olympic Games. ~ Natalie Du Toit

I was an athlete growing up and I miss that. I miss hanging out with dudes and making raunchy jokes and telling stories, trading details, you know? There's something I really miss about that. ~ Chris Pratt

Read, read . . . and then read some more. Read everything you can get your hands on! Reading to a writer is as medical school is to a doctor, as physical training is to an athlete, as breathing is to life. ~ Andrew Joyce

OK, I'll put it like this: I doubt if we will see another All-American basketball athlete who is a Rhodes Scholar. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

When I first went to Stevens Point, I never thought I'd ever be close to the NBA. I didn't even think about the NBA. The big start for me was making it to the final cut for the Olympic team, and I was the only one who was going to be back for my senior year of college. ~ Terry Porter

It is very good to be Olympic champion, but that is not the strongest field. ~ Martin Lel

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing. ~ Wladimir Klitschko

For me, I've lived a life as an athlete. ~ Giancarlo Esposito

An Olympic gold medal is something that almost seems like a fantasy. Yes, of course I want it, since I was a little kid, before I even knew what the World Cup tour was. ~ Hannah Kearney

It's a common myth that athletes and other highly active people need the protein from meat and dairy to fuel their activities and build and repair muscles and other bodily tissues. In fact, there is growing evidence that consumption of too much protein can lead to very serious health issues, including kidney disease, osteoporosis, and cancer. The active body can get all the protein it needs from a diverse, 100% plant-based diet. ~ Sharon Gannon

I have a real passion for children. I always wanted to teach and only became an athlete because my parents told my brother Parenthesis and me that we should use any God-given talent we had. ~ Gail Devers

I used to go to some Harvard parties with my athlete friends, and they would introduce me as 'Winona, the Indian activist.' It made me uncomfortable. I felt like a novelty. ~ Winona LaDuke

I have got better things to do in working with my athletes who I feel are going to be involved in 2012. ~ Linford Christie

As an athlete, success is not just about winning; it is about working hard and giving it all you have. I have always taken one match at a time and worked hard; when I succeeded, I worked further on the aspects of the game which worked for me; when I failed, I listed out my weaknesses and worked on them. ~ Rohan Bopanna

Athletics have an obvious advantage over the classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money, as well as the possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic traits of character and temperament. ~ Thorstein Veblen

There's far more that goes into being a professional athlete than being a college athlete. So many differences that people don't realize. It's not just about playing football and getting paid to do it. There's a lot of things that you have to deal with. ~ Robert Griffin III

I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work. All I could do was shrug and say "We'll just have to see". ~ Dick Fosbury

When the business man who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competitive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is 'unprofessional,' the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men. ~ Ida Tarbell

Distance running to a professional athlete in my day was five laps around the field. And you stopped each lap to take your pulse. ~ Lynn Swann

I'd like to see the high schools put in a rule that limits recruitable athletes from playing on teams outside a 100-mile radius from their home or school. ~ Dean Smith

I learned to canoe at summer camp and thought I'd pursue Olympic whitewater canoeing. In my senior year of high school, I instead decided to attend M.I.T. I like to say I've had only two jobs in my life: whitewater canoeing instructor and wilderness guide in college, and C.E.O. of iRobot. ~ Colin Angle

In reality, we can prove that the incidents of drug, alcohol abuse and violence have dropped dramatically among professional athletes - but the problem is it would be impossible to convince than fans, because of what they read on the AP wire. ~ Leigh Steinberg

Being a musician - it's easier for me to date an athlete. There's too much competition [with a musician]. There's too much know-it-all pop star. ~ Jessica Simpson

Boxing was not something I truly enjoyed. Like a lot of things in life, when you put the gloves on, it's better to give than to receive. ~ Sugar Ray Leonard

And, in nineteen seventy two Olympic Games I wasn't really going to be a star, and overnight I became a star. ~ Olga Korbut

The Olympics is about showing what you've done with your life, your dream as an athlete and sharing that with the world. ~ Sasha Cohen

I'm sick of the media making female sports athletes into supermodels, when they're clearly sixes at best. ~ Daniel Tosh

Behind every successful athlete there is a responsible coach. ~ Paul Bamikole

I think England will win a Test. My concern is Australia will probably win two. ~ Geoffrey Boycott

The truth is, we are never just one thing. We all have many titles and many labels, but far too often, we get trapped inside a single definition. The Teacher's Pet, the Rule Follower, the Cheerleader, the Athlete, the Princess, the Basket Case, the Criminal... the Rock Star's Girlfriend. Whether we wrote that definition or it was given to us, it somehow becomes our only identity. We get so lost in it that we forget about all the other pieces that make up who we are. ~ Jessica Brody

The 2002 (Olympic) team was a great team, we won the gold medal, they deserved all the accolades that they got. But this team seems to have a little more depth and maybe a little more talent to pick from. So it makes the job of picking the right 23 guys even more difficult. ~ Wayne Gretzky

I don't see myself as disabled. There's nothing I can't do that able-bodied athletes can do. ~ Oscar Pistorius

Being an athlete in a cold-weather sport is really difficult to deal with the asthma. ~ Charlie White

It probably won't sink in until I've retired from running but I'm a much better athlete than two years ago. ~ Michael East

I believe that coaches and athletes should realize that the athletic department field, court or diamond can be made an extension of the classroom, a place where you and your teammates are learning more than just how to prepare to win. The field, the court, and the diamond should be places where athletes are constantly learning about the game in which they participate, about their coaches and teammates, and perhaps most importantly, about themselves. ~ Phillip Shriver

I'm definitely an athlete who has a hobby playing music. I've been doing baseball since I was 5 or 6. It's the only thing I've ever thought of really my whole life, and music came into my life actually in '99, playing and singing. It's definitely been the only hobby I've had that I can't put down. ~ Bronson Arroyo

Reading about ethics is about as likely to improve one's behavior as reading about sports is to make one into an athlete. ~ Mason Cooley

It's like an athlete. He has a string of hot years, and then he fades into nothingness. The actor doesn't necessarily fade into nothingness. After his hot years, he fades into a different category. ~ Ed Asner